ABSTRACT
One of the great legacies of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) is the recognition that nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society groups had played an essential role in global policy development. This recognition would prove increasingly significant in the years that followed, as it resulted in new alliances between the United Nations and civil society. The UN had entered into a ‘second generation’ relationship with civil society, broadening the range of NGOs with access to UN consultations from a select group of international NGOs to a myriad of regional and local organisations (Hill 2004). The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) benefited considerably from this favourable situation. When the convention’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Desertification (INCD) began its work in May 1993, the long-term field experience garnered by NGOs and other community-based organisations justified their place at the negotiating table.
